Summary

Trust is an essential prerequisite for effective leadership, and it is built on competence, integrity, and benevolence.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of trust in leadership, asserting that leaders must be trusted by their followers to foster true engagement and meaningful direction. According to the ADP Research Institute, employees are more likely to be fully engaged at work if they trust their team leader. Professor Jim Davis from the University of Notre Dame identifies three key components that employees must believe about their leaders to trust them: competence, integrity, and benevolence. Competence requires leaders to demonstrate their qualifications and skills through actions that team members can observe. Integrity is about consistency in words and actions and doing the right thing. Benevolence involves showing genuine care for the team's well-being and considering their best interests. The article suggests practical ways for leaders to cultivate these qualities, such as involving team members in their work, being transparent about mistakes, and maintaining ethical standards. By nurturing trust through these means, leaders can inspire their teams to achieve exceptional results and foster long-term loyalty.

Opinions

Trust is not automatically granted with a leadership title; it must be earned through consistent and reliable actions.
Leaders should let their teams observe their work, especially in areas of expertise, to reinforce their competence.
The article suggests that admitting to mistakes and discussing lessons learned can enhance a leader's perceived competence.
Integrity is crucial, and leaders must follow through on their commitments to maintain trust.
Leaders are expected to stand up against unethical practices, reinforcing their integrity even when it's challenging.
Benevolence is demonstrated when leaders advocate for their team's needs, listen to their concerns, and show care for their personal lives.
Trust in a leader can be likened to a bank account, with every action either contributing to or depleting the trust balance.
Leaders who prioritize building trust can expect higher engagement, better performance, and increased loyalty from their team members.

Trust: The Prerequisite For Leadership

And how to demonstrate competence, integrity, and benevolence to your team.

There’s technically only one thing you need to have to be a leader, and that one thing is followers. While there are plenty of managers who have employees reporting to them, direct reports are not necessarily the same thing as engaged followers.

Just because employees are complying with orders from their manager, doesn’t mean that they are engaged in following that manager in the kind of purposeful way that would transform that manager into a leader.

If You Want to Be a Better Leader, Think Like a Pilot

Take your seats and prepare for take-off

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In their 2020 Global Workplace Study, the ADP Research Institute found that an employee is 14x more likely to be fully engaged at work if he/she trusts the team leader.

To be a true leader, your team must first trust you.

Only then will they follow you in a meaningful way.

But what factors lead to employees fully trusting their leaders?

Jim Davis, Professor at the University of Notre Dame shares three things your employees must believe about you before they will trust you:

They must believe you are competent.
They must believe you have integrity.
They must believe you are benevolent.

We all know that trust isn’t given, it’s earned.

Here’s what you can do to build and bolster your team’s beliefs in your competence, integrity, and benevolence.

Competence

Your team must believe you are qualified to do your job, and that you are good at what you do.

You might be thinking, “Of course I’m good at what I do. That’s the whole reason I was put in charge of managing the team, and I shouldn’t have to prove that to anyone.”

But, haven’t you ever worked for someone who had no idea what they were doing? I have, and your team probably has too. Yet somehow that person made it into management despite their incompetence. So, I rest my case…

All you have to do to gain your team’s belief in your competence is to let them observe you doing what you do best.

If you’re in sales, perhaps you develop up-and-coming employees by having them join you on customer visits as you dazzle potential clients.
If you’re in talent acquisition, maybe you have team members shadow your interviews for hard-to-fill positions that require a bit more selling of the opportunity to candidates.

When your team realizes they have learned something by watching you work, your level of competence speaks for itself. In that moment, you have helped them become better than they were before you came along.

You won’t always knock it out of the proverbial park, and part of competence is having the humility to admit when you weren’t at your best. Don’t gloss over those times. Instead, transparently share what you think could’ve gone better and what you will try differently next time around. Your team will respect your growth-mindset.

Integrity

Your team must believe that you follow through and do what you say you will do and that you do the right thing.

Doing what you say you will do every single time is easier said than done, and realistically it may not be possible 100% of the time.

Things change. Priorities shift. Strategy evolves.

However, nothing erodes trust faster than a leader who routinely fails to follow through on his/her commitments to the team.

Have you ever had a boss, or known someone with a boss, who regularly blew off or rescheduled his/her weekly check-in meetings because ‘something urgent came up?’

Not only does this scream, ‘my work is more important than your one-on-one,’ but it’s also a really great way to demonstrate to that team member that they can’t depend on you to stick to your word.

Further, if you or your team are being told to do something objectively wrong, you have a responsibility as a leader to stand up and do the right thing.

Your team is always watching, even when you think they’re not. If something feels wrong to you, I can guarantee it feels wrong to them too, and they’re just sitting back and waiting to see what your next move will be.

If you’re asked to do the wrong thing and you proceed without so much as a hint of pushback, it signals a lack of integrity to your team. And if they don’t see you do the right thing publicly, they’re always going to wonder what other poor decisions you’re making when no one is watching.

Being a leader is about standing up for what’s right even when no one else will. And sometimes that means standing alone.

No one said it would be easy, but it will always be worth it.

Benevolence

Your team must believe that you have their best interest at heart and that you care about them as people.

Most of us simply want our concerns to be heard and our points of view taken into account before decisions that affect us are made. We want to work for a leader who advocates for us when we’re not in the room.

How to Gain Your Team’s Respect

The best bosses I ever worked for didn’t toe the company line.

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This might mean saying ‘no’ to a request from a senior leader knowing that your team is already overloaded or struggling with burnout.
Or this might look like taking the extra time to explain ‘the why’ behind a decision or change that you know will be unpopular with the team.

It doesn’t mean that decisions they disagree with will change or that they will always get their way, it just means that you demonstrate a commitment to hearing them out and acknowledging the impact these decisions have on them as people.

Cura personalis, a Latin phrase that translates to ‘care for the whole person,’ is at the root of benevolence because your employees are not just professionals. They have lives outside of the 4 walls of the office, and they deserve to be able to bring their full selves to work every day.

If they’re generous enough to share some insight into the non-work parts of their lives, extend them the courtesy of caring enough about them to check-in and ask about it.

I worked for a phenomenal leader during a time when I was going through some health challenges. I desperately needed the flexibility to be away from the office sporadically but was feeling royally guilty about it.

“This isn’t a jail,” she told me one day.

“You can leave whenever you need to. Do what you need to do when you need to do it.”

That demonstrated her care for me as a whole person. It made me smile too, which never hurts in stressful times.

I like to think of the trust your team has in you as their leader like a bank account. Each day, your actions function as either deposits or withdrawals into the accounts of competence, integrity, and benevolence.

The more your actions fill these accounts, the more your team will trust you and, therefore, follow you in a meaningful way that drives exceptional results.

If I trust my leader, I am far more likely to go above and beyond for that person. I am far more likely to expend the discretionary effort that will take my work from good to great. And I am also far more likely to remain at that organization long-term so that I can continue to work for that leader.

If you have a whole team of people doing that on your behalf…?

Well, the possibilities for that team, and you as their leader, are endless.

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